Is It Normal For Gutters To Overflow?
It's certainly not normal for gutters to overflow, however given heavy enough rain, any installation will become overwhelmed.
If your gutters are overflowing regularly, something isn't working properly and you should get in touch for our gutter cleaning service in the first instance - click here for more info.
What Causes Guttering To Overflow?
Regardless of the situation, the cause of gutters overflow is almost always too much water (normally rain) for the guttering system to handle in one go.
If you think about it like a bath tub, if your taps are filling the tub faster than the drain pipe can let water flow away, it will eventually overflow, even if it starts empty.
The same applies in a storm - for a while, the guttering appears to be doing its job, but if the rain is falling fast enough, the half-pipe shaped guttering around the base of your roof will fill up and overflow.
Of course, there are some situations where this is far more likely to occur, and very heavy sustained rain is just one of them.
Obstructed Gutters
If you do not get your guttering cleaned regularly (it doesn't always need to be monthly or quarterly, annual cleaning is sometimes fine), you'll get build ups forming in the gutters.
This might be dirt and even moss from the roof, it could be a stray tennis ball from games in the back garden, or debris that birds have dropped onto your roof that's made it into the gutter in the rain.
Anything that's in the gutters and not flowing away in the rain will reduce the effectiveness of the drainage, meaning less water can escape. Gradually this build up snowballs and eventually results in overflowing guttering.
Poorly Designed Roofing
Some homes have suboptimal designs from a guttering perspective. For example, if your home is 'L-shaped' when you look down from above (like on Google Earth), you'll get two shorter external walls forming the inside of the L shape.
That means there's a far greater amount of roof surface draining down into a smaller section of guttering. There's not a lot your can do about the shape of your home, but if these sections regularly overflow, get in touch and we may be able to fit larger capacity lengths of guttering in these areas to allow rain water to dissipate more quickly.
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